Ultrasound imaging systems generate ultrasonic echoes from deliberately launched diagnostic sound waves into tissue. The ultrasonic echoes are attenuated in proportion to the distance that the sound waves must travel to reach the reflector, plus the distance that the resulting echoes must travel back to reach the receiver. The ultrasounds are displayed on a screen, providing medical information for the operator.
Frame averaging data has often been used to add persistence to images. Usually this is done on unsigned data. However, when frame averaging color doppler image data, it is necessary to consider the aliasing of the color frequency estimates. Aliased color data may change sign from one frame to the next, thus the algorithm needs to detect this and adapt by using a different weighting scheme. In addition, the acoustic frame rate of color data can have a wide range, making the persistence from the frame averaging look lighter or heavier.
It would be desirable then to have a method for color adaptive frame averaging for ultrasound imaging systems which overcomes the problems associated with the prior art.